0400 is a groggy time to be waking up and headed to the airport. Excitement - or was it anxiety? - mixed with a handful of fatigue, and a pinch of serenity as I found myself driven to the airport.

In the car, a large grey box taking up almost the entire truck and back seat and a grey black duffel bag. The box carried my bike, broken into parts and packed in foam between two hardshells of plastic. In the bag, clothes, a helmet, sleeping bag and bad, and a pot. Together, these two bags will make up the entire contents of my life for the next 11 weeks.

The 4 am lights slipped through the inky blackness like fish as we hurtled to the airport. A waxing gibbus moon provided a soft illumination for the world.

That hurtling feeling was not new to me. It feels like jumping off of a high cliff into water.

Your friend knows a spot. He takes you and a few others to it. He tells you he has heard about the jump - it's supposed to be awesome, lift changing, really. You decide in the car that you will do it. You start telling your friends

"When we get there, I'm just going to do it."

"Yeah, whatever," your friends reply.

You arrive, and see the cliff. It's awesome. Tall and imposing. High, but not too high. This is what I need, you tell yourself. A jump like that.

You hike up. On the way, you ask the friend who has done it how sketchy the landing is.

"Deep and clear" your friend replies.

You get to the top. You peer over the edge. It is actually a lot higher from here you reflect.

So do your friends. "Whooo wee. That is high" they say. The fear starts to set in. Or is that excitement. You could turn back, but you want to be known as the guy who follows through more than you don't want to jump.

It is here that you become fully committed to jumping. Here that you let yourself be propelled by the momentum your prior actions have imbued into your present self's reality.

But it's not like you have time for fear or thinking or anything else anyway! You have things to do - a jump to mentally and physically prepare for. You strip to your swimwear. You kick yourself for not caching the towel where you would get out of the water, not where you are getting into it. You imagine what the dive should look like, how you will leave the edge and enter the water.

With your friends watching, you walk to the edge one last time, turn around and walk 5 paces back. Then you start to run for the lip.

It is at this point, that the inexorable force takes full control - you have passed the event horizon.

You watch from a first person perspective. You see your bare feet in the stone of the cliff edge, you feel your body lower and tense for the run.

Step.

Try as you might, you cannot stop.

Step.

And in a momentary flash of realization.

Step.

You finally realize that have been for a while.

Step.

Your mind goes blank.

Step.

Your toes curl around the edge. And you jump.

…

Read the rest at https://alexstrong.design/posts/event-horizon/

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